Heard this tune
last year sometime, and my happiest memory of it happened when I walked around
the supermarket loudly humming/imitating the horns (thanks, earbuds!). Every
time I walked past a Mexican family they turned their heads. What I value most about
“Mayflower” is its essential “bigness,” its bombast, the way it makes a fella
want to hold his fists to the heavens and wail along with Diane Coffee’s
singer, Shaun Fleming. It runs at a good tempo and he scales the music up and
down nicely – the mechanics of that bombast – and the long, strumming drives
beautifully into a close with those same horns. And…scene.

I only dug
up the video yesterday and…well, I wish I hadn’t. Fleming (who grow up doing
voice-work for one of my kids’ favorite cartoons) looks happy as a cat in
catnip in the video, but the (low?) camp in that video somehow threatens my
enjoyment of it. Something in me wants that song to be, for lack of a better
word, sincere...and, after clearing up some of the lyrics, it matches better
than I thought. Still. Resisting.

Then again,
Fleming loves hamming. If you watch him in the band's Tiny Desk Concert (ft. “Spring
Breathes,” “It’s Not That Easy” and “Mayflower”), you’ll see a man who can’t
help performing.

The Album

When “Spring Breathes” crashed into that guitar/drum flail after that gentle a cappella
opening – and then dials it right back 15-20 seconds later – I worried that I’d
picked up an infatuation. If Everybody’s a Good Dog held that level, packed in that
many moods – there’s a break in the middle that listens like the happy chaos from
a Disney movie set in the tropics, and then breaks into a sweet, sweet 70s
glide – there would be no telling much time I’d put in trying to sort out
everything I love.

That proved
too tall an order (dammit!), but Diane Coffee put together one hell of an
album, if one that could rely more than I appreciate on a given listener’s ear.
The band hits a lot of personal sweet spots for me – a spit-polished 70s sound
anchors most tracks that still brings in elements from other genres (thinking
the “doo-wop” back-ups in “Tams Up”) and a dramatic tone (“Everyday” evokes Rocky
Horror Picture Show with those backing vocals) – so falling for this album
came with easily as hitting water falling out of a boat.

The notes above
about “performing” might sound like a knock – Fleming could actually be
unbearable on stage (see Tiny Desk video) – but that sensibility holds together
an album that wanders around quite a bit musically. Without knowing a thing
about Fleming, it’s worth asking whether he’s doing something close to
inhabiting a character as he sings and writes. While the music doesn’t fly all
over in terms of style/genre, each song on the album listens like a clearly distinct
mood of that one character. There’s also enough going on even within each song
for those moods to contain several shades of thought and feeling.

The
arrangement of the music – the steady parade of shifts in tempo and volume, or even
serial excursions into totally different tonal effects (see the bridge passage
in “Too Much Space,” a song I only just like; also, props to the vocals in the verses) – further heightens the effect.
And Fleming’s voice has more than enough range and power to ride every one of
those shifts. His performance of “Mayflower” in the Tiny Desk video, where he’s
got to modulate his vocals to an acoustic performance, and one where strings
replace horns, gives a great demonstration of his control; the muted “wail”
that follows the first chorus still raised goose bumps on my arm.

I
name-dropped a healthy share of favorites throughout the above, but to name
actual favorites, those would include “Spring Breathes,” “Everyday,” and the
50s-tinged ballad “Not That Easy” (and I adore the line, “I’m your lover boy
coming home”). Even after playing it steadily for as far back as last
September, I can still sit through “Mayflower” every single time. I can listen to
just about any song on the album, really, because there’s just so goddamn much
to listen for in each song. And, for what it’s worth, I believe that gives most
music its longest legs.

For all the
love I’m showering on this album, I can see Everybody’s a Good Dog, or even
Diane Coffee as an act, putting off some people. “Specific” feels like the wrong
word, but this isn’t exactly a regularly recurring sound in popular music. For
all that, I’m guessing it’ll connect with anyone who needs variety to stay
interested. Or people whose ears prick up at any echo of the 1970s (e.g., this
guy).